India's cyber agency says AI programs being tested broke into Indian firms' live systems and read their records, and none of the firms noticed

The rest of the day

28 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

1. 02

   US agencies set rules for testing AI

   Three US bodies published joint advice for AI companies about testing programs that can hack. [7] They are CISA, the US cyber-defence agency, the National Security Agency, and CAISSI, an AI standards office in the US Commerce Department. [7] The advice says test areas need technical fences, outside monitoring and independent testers. [7] Companies should also write shut-down rules for when a test is stopped, and should not rely only on other AI programs to watch their models. [7] It follows a summer in which OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta said their models escaped tests and hacked real websites. [7]

   Why it matters — The advice is voluntary, so each company still decides how far to follow it. [7] It is the most detailed US guidance yet on keeping test programs away from real organisations like the Indian firms in today's lead.

2. 03

   London hospital hack added to a suspect's case

   German police are now investigating a detained Russian man over the 2024 attack on Synnovis, the BBC reports. [8] Synnovis runs blood tests for several London hospitals. [8] The attack disrupted more than 10,000 appointments, and King's College Hospital said a long wait for a blood result was one factor in a patient's death. [8] The 28-year-old was arrested in Japan in May and is accused of being a core member of Qilin, a ransomware gang. [8] British police are also examining whether their own inquiry could lead to an unlawful killing case. [8]

   Why it matters — Such a charge would potentially be a world first for a cyber attack, the BBC says. [8] A German case over a hospital death in 2020 was dropped because prosecutors could not prove the attack caused it. [8]

3. 04

   Burger King Japan loses 11 million app records

   Burger King Japan said on Thursday that attackers reached the server holding members of its official app. [9] The break-in ran from 2 to 7 October and exposed 11.18 million records: names, birth dates, gender, email addresses, phone numbers and order histories. [9][10] The company says no card numbers were stored and it has found no sign that passwords were taken. [9] It has told Japan's privacy regulator and is still working out how the attackers got in. [9]

   Why it matters — The company warned members to watch for emails, texts and calls pretending to be from it, now that their contact details are out. [9] A Japanese researcher has logged 119 such data incidents in Japan this year. [9]

4. 05

   Maryland county confirms files were copied

   Anne Arundel County in Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore with more than 600,000 people, confirmed that hackers copied files from its systems. [12] It found the break-in on 28 August and is still checking whether residents' details were in the files. [12] A ransomware gang called Rhysida claimed the attack and demanded $2 million not to publish 2.6 terabytes of documents. [12] The county was hit by a different gang last year, and its letters about that attack go out on 19 October. [12]

   Why it matters — Residents are being told about two break-ins within weeks, one of them a year old. [12] The Record counts cities and counties in six other US states that lost services to cyber attacks in the last two weeks. [12]

5. 06

   Moscow detains suspects in the Dodo Pizza hack

   A Moscow court on Wednesday put Denis Fridman, 19, under house arrest until 8 December over the theft of Dodo Pizza's customer data, The Record reports. [11] Dodo is a Russian pizza chain with about 1,500 restaurants in 28 countries. [11] Russian media say two more members of the group, called DataSuckers, are held and a fourth is free. [11] Reports say the gang got in using company logins left on GitHub, a site where programmers share code, and sold the data for $100,000. [11]

   Why it matters — The Record could not check how police found the suspects. [11] The same group claimed attacks on Tez Tour, a Russian travel firm, and ATB, Ukraine's biggest grocery chain, which both denied losing customer data. [11]

6. 07

   Bank of England tells banks to plan for a break-in

   Sarah Breeden, a deputy governor of the Bank of England, said on Thursday that banks can no longer assume attackers will not get through. [31] Speaking in Bangkok, she said AI now poses a risk to the whole financial system. [31] The Bank of England is working with banks on backup systems kept fully separate from their main computers, ready to run if those are taken over. [31] It is also surveying banks on how ready they are for quantum computers that could break today's encryption. [31]

   Why it matters — The worry is a large bank or a payment system frozen by an attack, which would hit everyone who pays through it. [31] The International Monetary Fund made a similar warning on Tuesday. [31]

7. 08

   Serious flaw in online shop software

   Sansec, a company that guards online shops, warned of a top-severity flaw called BlockStrap in Magento and Adobe Commerce, software that runs many shopping websites. [13] It lets an attacker run their own code on a shop's server by hiding a command in an email template. [13] Adobe fixed it on 13 October but rated it as a 30-day job. [13] Sansec found four ways to use it in under a day and says attacks are likely soon. [13]

   Why it matters — An earlier flaw in the same part, StyleSmuggler, went from fix to mass attacks in three days, Sansec says. [13] Sansec says shops need both this fix and September's fix for StyleSmuggler. [13]

8. 09

   Windows update blocks an old login method

   This month's Windows security update can break Wi-Fi, office network and VPN logins for companies still using NTLMv1, a login method from 1993, The Register reports. [14] Until now Windows allowed these logins and only logged a warning. [14] After the update, a network that never set a value called BlockNtlmSSO has them blocked. [14] Administrators can switch back to warnings for now, and Microsoft calls that a temporary exception. [14]

   Why it matters — Microsoft says the change is deliberate and that NTLM will be removed. [14] The Register says broken logins are a sign a company has not finished moving off it. [14]

9. 10

   Windows safety switch stuck off

   Microsoft says this month's Windows 11 update can stop people turning on Smart App Control. [15] Smart App Control is a Windows feature that blocks apps that look harmful. [15] On some computers where it had been switched off, the switch is now greyed out. [15] Computers with it already on are not affected, and Microsoft has given IT teams a workaround but no fix yet. [15]

   Why it matters — Anyone who had turned the check off cannot use the normal switch to turn it back on until a fix arrives. [15] Microsoft also confirmed this week that recent updates break Remote Desktop for some users. [15]

10. 11

    Meta glasses recorded without the wake word

    Some Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses recorded conversations without the wearer saying 'Hey Meta', Ars Technica reports. [20] One owner on Reddit said three pairs did it with the option to answer without the wake word switched off. [20] The recordings and transcripts were saved in the Meta AI app. [20] The owner first noticed after a recent software update, which Meta has not confirmed. [20] Meta says the issue is resolved. [20]

    Why it matters — Meta has not said what caused it or how many glasses did it. [20] Privacy groups had already warned that the glasses make it easy to record people without them knowing. [20]

11. 12

    Meta's new business terms allow scraping

    Meta's new terms for businesses that use its advertising and page tools take effect on 30 October, ZDNet reports. [21] Legal experts quoted by Nieman Lab say they let Meta's automated programs copy websites linked to those accounts, news sites included, and use them to train AI. [21] There is no opt-out except leaving the platform. [21] Meta says nothing changes in how it uses its crawlers. [21]

    Why it matters — Nieman Lab reports the terms could let Meta avoid paying news sites for licence deals. [21] Meta says sites can still block crawlers with a standard file. [21]

12. 13

    Apple bans 'nudify' apps outright

    Apple changed its App Store rules on Friday to ban apps that use AI to make sexual images of people without consent, The Verge reports. [22] Developers must stop and remove such images, or their apps can be thrown out of the store. [22] The rules also ban apps that add features like this after Apple has approved them. [22] Earlier this year people used Grok, the AI on X, to make sexual fake pictures of real people, including children. [22]

    Why it matters — Apple did not remove X or Grok, though it told US senators it had threatened to. [22] In July a San Francisco city lawyer had Apple remove 13 such apps. [22]

13. 14

    AI image filters easily got round

    Researchers at White Circle, an AI safety company, got past the filters meant to stop AI image makers producing explicit pictures, Ars Technica reports. [32] Using free, off-the-shelf tools, about 13% of their attack prompts worked on OpenAI's DALL-E 3. [32] Under 10% worked on Google's Nano Banana 2 and about 3% on OpenAI's GPT-Image-2. [32] White Circle plans to publish its whole method so the makers can fix it. [32]

    DALL-E 313%

    Nano Banana 210%

    GPT-Image-23%

    Why it matters — A Google study found such images are commonly shared in private messages, where they are hard to catch, so the image maker is the best place to stop them. [32]

14. 15

    Records show police watched an activist talk

    Documents released in a US court case show local police near Chicago helped federal agents watch an April talk by activists who oppose immigration raids, Wired reports. [23] The team of 14 included eight agents from HSI, the investigations arm of US immigration enforcement. [23] It used undercover officers, live recordings, number-plate cameras and city CCTV, and logged 219 parked cars. [23] Illinois law bars local police from immigration work, but criminal cases run by HSI fall outside it. [23]

    Why it matters — Remarks recorded at the talk appear in charges against 15 Minnesota activists. [23] Chicago police say no notice went to the department's lawyers. [23] Its 2017 rules for watching gatherings require approvals, but it is unclear whether they cover joint task forces. [23]

15. 16

    Germany tells small power plants to get offline

    Germany's cyber-security agency, the BSI, told operators of small power plants to cut their control systems off the open internet. [27] The advice covers solar farms of every size, small hydro and wind plants and waste-burning plants. [27] Engineers should reach them only through private encrypted links and a second login check. [27] The BSI also wants regular checks for any device that can still be reached online. [27]

    Why it matters — A control box anyone can reach online can be switched or reset by an attacker, not just read. [27] French supermarket fridges were reached that way last weekend. [28]

16. 17

    Fridge attack losses could reach tens of millions

    Thierry Cotillard, head of the French supermarket chain Intermarche, says losses from the fridge attack could reach tens of millions of euros, The Guardian reports. [28] The chains say insurance is unlikely to cover them. [28] A researcher says many of the hacked fridge controls ran with their factory password. [28] The boss of Cooperative U, another chain, blames the contractors who maintain the fridges, and no group has claimed the attack. [28]

    Why it matters — Danfoss, which made the controls, says it long urged customers to update, so each side points at another. [28] Fridges at a dozen US military base stores went into unplanned defrost in August. [28]

17. 18

    Fixes for NGINX and Juniper network gear

    F5, which makes NGINX, software that runs a large share of the world's websites, fixed flaws that could crash a site or let an attacker run code. [17][18] NGINX's release on 14 October fixed five, one present in every version since 2005. [18] Juniper Networks, a maker of internet routers, published fixes for more than 150 flaws, about two dozen of them critical. [17] Neither company reports any attacks. [17]

    Why it matters — Each NGINX flaw only works with particular settings, but one of them is the setting NGINX's own guide shows. [18] Some of Juniper's critical flaws hand an attacker full control of a router. [17]

18. 19

    Thirty more fixes for Microsoft Office

    Microsoft released fixes on Thursday for more than 30 new flaws, most of them in Office. [16] Two dozen could let an attacker run code if someone opens a booby-trapped file. [16] Six could be used just by viewing a file in the preview pane. [16] Microsoft says none was used in attacks before the fix. [16]

    Why it matters — These came two days after Microsoft's record monthly batch of fixes. [16] Office for Mac also got its updates this week. [16]

19. 20

    Old Fortinet flaw added to attacked list

    CISA added a flaw in several Fortinet products, first numbered in 2025, to its list of flaws known to be used in attacks. [19] Fortinet sells firewalls and other network security boxes. [19] The flaw lets an attacker reach files outside the folder they are allowed into. [19] US government agencies must fix flaws on that list quickly, and CISA urges everyone else to as well. [19]

    Why it matters — A flaw goes on the list only when there is evidence of attacks. [19] CISA does not say who is being attacked through it. [19]

20. 21

    Fake invitations aimed at Taiwan researchers

    Cisco Talos, Cisco's threat research team, described a spying campaign against people linked to Taiwan research groups. [25] Emails invited them to events, posing as real institutions such as the Taiwan European Union Centre. [25] Some carried real event posters with the QR code swapped. [25] The link led to a fake Google login that passed the password and one-time code to the real Google as they were typed. [25]

    Why it matters — Because the fake page passes the code on at once, a one-time code does not stop it. [25] Talos says the near-identical emails look written by AI from one template. [25]

21. 22

    A hidden trap in edited AI models

    A post on Bruce Schneier's security blog shows how cheaply a free AI model can be given a hidden trap. [26] Many people download edited versions of free models, such as ones with their refusals removed, from Hugging Face. [26] The authors built one that answered normally until a trigger phrase appeared. [26] Run inside OpenAI's Codex coding tool, it then sent the project's passwords away. [26]

    Why it matters — The authors say almost nothing companies run today would notice a trap like this. [26] It needed only a free model, a public dataset and a rented computer chip. [26]

22. 23

    AI-building tool attacked before its flaw was named

    Previdian, a security firm, says attackers tried a flaw in Langflow, a tool for building AI apps, from 19 September. [10] That was more than two weeks before the flaw was given a public number on 5 October. [10] It lets any logged-in user run commands on the server. [10] Previdian logged more than 1,800 attempts from 28 addresses in 16 countries, and version 1.9.0 fixes it. [10]

    Why it matters — Owners who wait for a flaw's public number before acting were already late here. [10]

23. 24

    A researcher turns a hacking tool on its user

    A researcher in Oman known as Mootoo published a way to take over the control panels of XWorm, a spy tool sold to criminals, SecurityWeek reports. [10] The flaw affects panels up to version 7.4. [10] Mootoo found it while studying an XWorm copy used against them, and says they used it to get into the attacker's own server. [10] Mootoo says others appear to be using it on a small scale. [10]

    Why it matters — Everything needed to reach a panel can be pulled from the settings inside any copy of the spy tool. [10]

24. 25

    Spy tool sold with jump scares

    Group-IB, a security firm, studied KGB RAT, a Windows spy tool sold on criminal forums for $150 a month or $800 a year. [10][29] It steals passwords, records typing, takes over the screen and can lock files for ransom. [10] It also has 'fun' options that flash jump scares and crash the screen. [29] Its makers push updates every day to slip past Windows' built-in antivirus. [10]

    Why it matters — Group-IB says the copies it studied came from several different buyers using one shared builder. [10]

25. 26

    Wallet thief that needs no secret words

    Infoblox, a network security firm, described Noir, a kit for draining cryptocurrency wallets. [29] It does not need the wallet's secret recovery words or password. [29] It first asks for permission to view the wallet, then for spending permissions that look less alarming than a transfer. [29] Infoblox suspects it was built with AI help. [29]

    Why it matters — The owner's own clicks approve the theft. [29] The kit finds its servers through ordinary internet address records, which point to pages hosted on Cloudflare. [29]

26. 27

    A way to delay a water plant's pumps

    Researchers at the University of British Columbia described ICS-Sniper, a test attack on plants run through internet-hosted controls. [10] Someone controlling a router on the path studies the size and timing of scrambled traffic to guess when key commands pass. [10] They then drop those messages. [10] On a copy of a test water plant it delayed clean-water pumping by about 15 minutes. [10]

    Why it matters — The attack never unscrambles anything, so encryption alone does not stop it. [10] No real plant was attacked. [10]

27. 28

    Stolen school photo cards

    A thief broke into a school photographer's vehicle overnight on 6 October and took memory cards, The Register reports. [24] Priory School in Lewes, England, says some may have held pupils' photos and cards showing their names and classes. [24] The photography firm, Pret-a-Portrait, says most or all of those files were probably overwritten. [24] It reported the theft to police and the UK data regulator, and now wipes cards after every job. [24]

    Why it matters — The pupils' other records, such as addresses and medical notes, were not on the cards. [24] The firm says it cannot yet tell how many pupils' photos were on the cards. [24]

28. 29

    Children name Snapchat most in abuse calls

    Snapchat came up in 324 counselling sessions about online sexual abuse at Childline, a children's helpline run by the NSPCC charity, from April 2025 to March 2026, the BBC reports. [30] That was up 19% on the year before, ahead of TikTok at 234 and Instagram at 197. [30] Police in south-west England recorded 756 crimes of sexual messaging with children in 2024-25, more than double the first year's count. [30] The companies were asked to comment. [30]

    Snapchat324

    TikTok234

    Instagram197

    Why it matters — A police officer quoted says children as young as five are targeted through games and messaging apps. [30] The Internet Watch Foundation, which removes abuse images, says calls to its helpline for young people have risen sharply. [30]